


the dimming divide

by pyrophane



Series: knocking me down with the palm of your eye [2]
Category: Pokemon GO
Genre: Childhood Friends, Getting Together, Introspection, Multi, Pining, Polyamory Negotiations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 16:06:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7647646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrophane/pseuds/pyrophane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Familiarity isn’t intimacy. Blanche watches Spark watching Candela, and wonders which of the three of them will be the first to fall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the dimming divide

**Author's Note:**

> so. this was intended to be a fic about fun roommate hijinks. unfortunately, fate had other plans involving blanche, the ot3, and talent narratives. a semi-sequel to [this fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7580860), but can be read as a standalone.
> 
> title from 'peach, plum, pear' by joanna newsom. my endless love to mandy and jamie for patiently stepping me through the basics of the pokemon world!
> 
> edit: translation into italian by [Lyrtil](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrtil/pseuds/Lyrtil) available [here](http://efpfanfic.net/viewstory.php?sid=3525399)!

 

 

 

 

 

When Blanche was eight, she’d broken her left arm falling out of a tree. It had been autumn, the smell of wet leaves like rust suffusing the bitter air. She’d been trying to rescue a Nidoran that had somehow gotten caught in the foliage, and her foot had skidded on the slippery bark, and she’d tumbled off the branch. It was, in hindsight, an abysmal idea in the first place, but Candela had shucked off her jacket at the sight of the stranded Nidoran, which of course meant that Blanche had to get there first.

The initial shock of the fall left her breathless, dazed. Sprawled on her back, she was dimly aware of Candela’s low, urgent voice in her ear, _Blanche, can you hear me, can you hear me? I—Spark, stay with her, I’ll go—get help—just—_

She’d landed badly. There was a faint, humming twinge lancing up her arm. She wasn’t crying, but Spark was. He was an easy crier, eyes welling up at the slightest provocation: coloured pencils arranged in the wrong order, a stubbed toe, the sight of a baby Growlithe. He squeezed her fingers with one hand and scrubbed at his eyes with the other. “Blanche—Blanche—you’re gonna be okay, it’s gonna be fine,” he kept saying, through his tears, though Blanche had never suggested otherwise.

“I’m fine,” Blanche said. Spark was still clutching her hand. “I’m fine, it’s—I think it’s broken, my arm? It doesn't hurt much.” It wasn’t true anymore; her arm felt cleaved open, wrung apart. “Don’t—don’t cry, it doesn’t hurt.”

“I’m crying s-so you don’t have to,” Spark said, sniffling.

“That’s—Spark, that’s not how it works, it’s still—”

But that was Spark. Heart endlessly open. Shouldering other people’s pain like it was that simple, like he could somehow lessen the hurt by sharing it, like he had an infinite amount of love to spare, apportioning it out unconditionally to anybody and everybody that might have needed it. Like he’d never known the dull, gasping ache of something broken beneath the surface; how the pain was unnoticeable until it was so absolute that there was no room for anything else, and nothing left to give.

Spark doesn’t cry quite so easily anymore, but sometimes Blanche catches him watching her with the same unguarded look on his face, only now it veers a little too close to sympathy for comfort. He watches Candela, too, when he doesn’t think she’s looking, and that’s an expression Blanche doesn’t know how to decipher, though they’ve known each other their whole lives.

Familiarity isn’t intimacy. Blanche watches Spark watching Candela, and wonders which of the three of them will be the first to fall. It won’t be her. She’s sure, at least, of that much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Candela calls her just as she’s finishing up decontamination for the day, voice strident and crackling with static over the transmission. She’s probably running around in the woods again, or halfway up a mountain, since trivial things like ease of geographical navigation or a reasonable sense of limits don’t matter when it comes to Pokémon. “Hey! How’s my favourite stick-in-the-mud?”

“Until about two seconds ago, elbow-deep in inconsistent data and Grimer secretion,” Blanche says, phone sandwiched between her shoulder and her ear as she hangs up her lab coat. “I love biology grunt work. Why did you call me?”

“Can’t a girl check up on her best rival every once and again?”

“Ha ha, Candela, really funny.”

A bright burst of laughter. “Just letting you know I’ll be out late tonight training with my Vulpix, don’t wait up for me—though you’re probably not going to sleep anyway, are you? Oh, and Spark’s doing some, like, crocheting evening class after he finishes up with the Prof, he told me to tell you. Anyway, I’ll leave you to your Grimer slime or whatever, have fun!”  

Candela hangs up before Blanche can even begin to formulate a response. She has a tendency of doing things like that. Barrelling ahead, a hurricane of shimmering intent and blazing movement, leaving the rest of them swept along in her wake. It’s dangerous to spend too much time around Candela. Her recklessness has always been infectious. If Blanche isn’t careful, she’ll end up fooling herself into having _expectations_ , which is the worst possible thing to do around somebody like Candela, all wildfire and sharp, smoking edges.

Candela’s a force of nature, and Blanche knows what happens to people who chase after storms.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For as long as she can remember, Blanche has taken things apart. Deconstructing something is the surest way to figure it out, and Blanche likes categorisation, containment, the methodical step-by-step process of disassembly to understand it at the simplest level before the reassembly; unscrewing radios and remote-controlled toy cars, unpicking knots. Long division, spawn statistics, chemical compounds. You can’t hope to make something unless you understand it, and you can’t hope to understand something unless you’ve broken it down to its constituents.

So Blanche deconstructs the others. There’s Spark’s wholehearted, open-palmed kindness; Candela’s instinctive ferocity and blistering warmth. Candela has always been so brilliant and Spark so painfully sincere it hurt to look at them, the intimacy they kept with their teams, moving forward without hesitation as though the future held only promise without fear. Hearts held aloft for the world to see, and Blanche thinks she will never be able to approximate anything like that no matter how many times she dismantles it to discern its inner workings and try to construct it herself.

She knows that they would teach her if she asked, but she won’t. It’s too late, anyway. The years when she could’ve set aside her pride to take those tentative first steps towards them have long passed. She is not like them. It won’t ever be enough for her, but she’s learned to live with second-bests, nearly-perfects. It’s a corollary of the person she is—always demanding more from herself than what she can perform, battle scores, gym tallies, school marks, and it leaves a bitterness in her mouth to settle for less, but survival mechanisms necessitate compromise. That’s the nature of them. If anything, Blanche understands the simple truth at the core of all things.

At her own core, inadequacy. That’s something she can’t deconstruct.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s dark by the time Blanche gets home, shadows gathering in the corners, the street subdued in inkwash greys. Her apartment feels strangely empty, though it’s only been a week since the others moved in, and she couldn’t possibly have accustomed herself to cohabitation in such a short period of time. “Well,” she says, puncturing the silence for the sake of it.

She showers, opts to leave her binder off in preparation for a long night of number-crunching ahead. There’s a one-litre water bottle on her desk that definitely wasn’t there in the morning. Attached is a bright yellow sticky note reading _STAY HYDRATED!! :D._ Blanche eyes it dubiously as she sets up her laptop, bites off what is definitely not a reluctant smile.

All her Pokémon are resting after a taxing afternoon spent whittling down gyms, but she’s been keeping her Ditto out of the action to let it recuperate from a particularly nasty Machop attack a few days ago. Now, Ditto transforms into an Arcanine and bounds into her lap. She buries her fingers into the scruff of its mane. “I’m not lonely,” she says. “I’m used to being by myself.” Ditto pushes its snout up against her palm, and she sighs. “I appreciate the company, but you don’t have to be someone else if you don’t want to. It’s just us two. I’m grateful either way.”

Ditto growls, and morphs back into its original form, fur retreating to cool smoothness against her palms. She allows herself the simplicity of the comfort for a few minutes. “Thank you,” she says. Ditto’s smiling, but then, Ditto is always smiling. “You should go rest, I’ve got a lot to do. I’ll take you out tomorrow, okay? We can go beat up Candela’s Vulpix together.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Actually, despite the extravagant narrative of rivalry she’s built up with Candela throughout the years, they’ve only had one fight of any real significance. They’d been partway through adolescence. Blanche was still taller, then, but Candela had just hit a growth spurt, limbs not quite folding up beneath her, though she still carried herself with a brash, comfortable grace that settled over her like a second skin.  

This memory isn’t a complete one. Blanche doesn’t remember what it is they were fighting about; it could have been anything out of an impressive range of minor disagreements stacked atop one another like pebbles, the same gravelly, glancing pain, foundations for ruin. Candela had probably started it. Blanche had definitely escalated it.

“Why do you keep _sabotaging_ yourself?” Candela had yelled, hands curled into fists by her sides. She must have been talking about the future. Candela always spoke like it was a given that they could part the oceans and conquer the world, but all Blanche saw was her back retreating further and further into the distance while she stayed helplessly still, caught in the past.

“You don’t understand,” Blanche gritted out. “You’ve—you’ve always been like that, you don’t get what it’s like for—for people who _aren’t._ ”

That was, in the end, the difference between them. Candela was capable of endless, indiscriminate faith. Blanche needed more. She knew the sum of her own self, its water and carbon matrices; she’d accepted its practical limitations, the things that would never come naturally to her the way they came to others. There would always be that degree of separation, no matter what she did to lessen it; the gap, however infinitesimal, between intent and act.

“You’re the one who doesn’t understand,” Candela said, and she sounded oddly, unfairly upset. Her eyes were so bright. “You think you know how things work, but you don’t. You get a choice. Everything can change.”

A collapsing exhaustion stripped the last of the anger from Blanche. She wanted, inexplicably,  to shift her weight towards Candela, to close the distance between them. She didn’t. They watched one another, seething, careful, holding themselves still. Candela turned away first. It didn’t feel like much of a victory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blanche jolts upright at the sound of a key in the lock. For a moment, adrenalin shorts out her breath, before she remembers the intricacies of her current roommate situation. There’s a crick in her neck. She blinks at the numbers in front of her, the writing smudged beyond legibility. She must have fallen asleep mid-calculation. Her Ditto’s on the cushion bed in the corner, presumably deep in slumber.  

“Hey, it’s me,” Spark says, appearing in the doorway. “Candela told you I’d be back late, right?”

“Yeah,” Blanche says, swallowing a yawn. “Something about a crocheting class?”

“It’s _knitting,_ not crocheting, they’re really not the same thing at all, and it’s kind of rude to say they are, I _told_ Candela—well. Anyway. You look… not great. Maybe you should call it a night?”

Blanche gives him the most baleful stare she can summon. “Do you not know me at all? These numbers aren’t going to arrange themselves into pretty datasets. And why are you taking knitting classes, anyway?”

Spark brandishes something that could either be an enormous, half-finished sweater, or a woollen sculpture of a Porygon. “My Snorlax gets cold really easily,” he explains. “I’ve got plans for, like, a whole series of knitted stuff for my kids—scarves, beanies, the works…”

“Yeah?” A wave of lethargy buffets Blanche. She drops her head onto the table, pillowing her cheek on her arms. It seems like a needless waste of energy to keep her eyes open, so she doesn’t.

“You sure you’re fine?” Spark sounds amused. “Don’t fall asleep in your binder.”

“Already took it off,” Blanche mumbles, sunbursts of red flashing behind her eyelids. “But you know what? I’m tired of hypothesising. Why do you look at Candela like that?”

“What do you mean? Like what?”

“Like you always do, when you think she isn’t watching.” Blanche turns her head towards Spark, lifts an eyelid, watches surprise flicker over his features like lamplight. “You never look at anyone else like that.”

“Because I love her,” Spark says, matter-of-fact. “Because she’s my best friend, and I love her.”

There’s a dull, gasping ache stirring somewhere beneath her breastbone that she doesn’t care to examine. “Of course,” she says. She’s been caught in Candela’s orbit since they were children, drawn to her explosive, mirroring intensity even as she flung up her arms to ward off the brightness. How typical, how shortsighted of her to think she was alone in it.

It’s exhausting, trying to figure out who she wants and who she wants to be. She thinks that once she knows for sure, it will be easier to manage. Categorisation, containment. She’ll try again in the morning, away from Spark and the unselfconscious honesty in his eyes.

“You’re wrong, though.” Spark’s voice is soft. Blanche is only half-anchored to wakefulness, too tired to open her eyes again, but she can hear the easy grin he must be wearing. Heart displayed, as always, for the world to see. “It isn’t only when Candela isn’t watching.” A brush of fingers against her wrist, so gentle she can’t be sure she isn’t imagining it. “And it isn’t only Candela, either.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“It’s just shock,” Blanche said, afterwards, when Candela had arrived with a teacher in tow, thrown a cursory glance over Blanche, who’d manoeuvred herself into a sitting position with Spark’s assistance, and proclaimed,  _you’re shaking, does it hurt that bad?_   “I said it doesn’t hurt. I’ll get over it. It’s just—shock, the physiological—catecholamines, I know how it works.”

Candela had looked at her. All clear-eyed, unpitying solemnity. Blanche would have believed anything of her, there and then. “Nothing’s ever ‘just’ anything,” she replied.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first thing Blanche registers upon waking is that she’s on the couch with a Charizard-emblazoned blanket thrown over her, rather than at her desk where she’s quite sure she fell asleep. The second thing Blanche registers is that someone is sitting next to her.

“Sleeping Beauty awakens,” Candela crows. Her hair is wet, sticking up in tufts like she’d started towelling it dry before losing interest halfway. She smells like Blanche’s soap. Not a wildfire, just a loud, smirking girl in her pyjamas, after all.

“ _Ugh,_ ” Blanche says, with feeling.

“Wait, Candela, did you want eggs, or—” Spark pauses in the doorway, carrying a glass of water, and gives Blanche a broad smile. “Hey, you’re up! Thought you looked a bit uncomfortable asleep at your desk, so Candela carried you to the couch.”

Embarrassment, sharp as a broken bone, floods her body. She sits up. She said too much last night. Spark is more perceptive than people tend to give him credit for, and she’s certain he _knows_ , now—

“So, uh, we should. Probably talk, I think,” he says, passing her the glass. Blanche wraps her fingers around it, steadying herself in somebody else’s workmanship, and downs the water in a single gulp.

“What’s there to talk about?” Blanche says.

Spark and Candela exchange a look. “Well, there’s some things we should clear up,” Candela begins. “Spark and I—”

“If you’re going to tell me you’re together, I already figured.” Blanche stares down at the empty glass. _Want, want to be._ She can’t tell the difference; maybe there is none, not for her. It is the worst situation imaginable. There's a weight like stones in her stomach.

“Don’t interrupt me! Did I say that?”

“Is this something we really have to be doing now?” Blanche snaps. “I have a lot of work to finish—”

“Yes!” Candela stabs a finger into Blanche’s shoulder. “I think we are all operating under a fundamental misunderstanding!”

“And that would be?”

Candela rolls her eyes, seizes the collar of Blanche’s shirt, and kisses her. Blanche makes a shocked, inarticulate noise into Candela’s mouth, and Candela takes the opportunity to deepen the kiss, before drawing back triumphantly. Blanche is definitely awake, now. “Um,” Blanche says. She casts a desperate look at Spark. “But I thought—”

Spark steps forward and presses his lips to the corner of Blanche’s mouth. He grins at her, a little rueful.

“Well, if that’s how we’re gonna do it,” Candela mutters, and slides her hand into Spark’s hair to tilt his head back and kiss him, too. She looks accusingly at Blanche. “Now do you get it? We both like you! And we want to date you, just so that’s totally clear and we don’t end up with the whole ‘been-living-together-for-months-and-you-haven’t-noticed’ situation again. Don’t look at me like that, this is on account of how, as I think we’ve established, you are not exactly the most observant of people when it comes to this sort of thing. So! Any objections?”

Blanche opens her mouth, then closes it. There are a thousand ways to take this apart, but for once, she doesn’t think she wants to. Still, the habit is hard to shake. “I’m not. I’m not good, with this sort of thing, I don’t—I won’t be able to—”

"We know you," Spark says. “We won’t ask more from you than what you can give.”

“We’re all learning here,” Candela says. “So why don’t we _learn together—_ ”

Blanche throws a cushion at her. Candela erupts into shrieking laughter and drapes herself over Blanche, tucking her face into the crook of Blanche’s neck. Spark’s laughing too, flinging his arms over the both of them. “Your hair is wet,” Blanche says, through the tangle of limbs, “gross, get _off_ me—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Candela singsongs, and there’s a trio of heartbeats in Blanche’s ears, unfamiliar and welcome and more than enough, and nothing has ever, ever come naturally to her, but this—the precise cadence of Spark’s laugh, the fine curl of Candela’s mouth, details she knows in the abstract but never quite like this, imperfectly aligned, fitting together despite it all—is something she’s willing to learn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading, and please let me know what you think! tumblr post about this fic is [here](http://delineative.tumblr.com/post/148294197930/fic-the-dimming-divide) ❤️
> 
> [tumblr](http://delineative.tumblr.com) | [twitter](https://twitter.com/ennezahard)


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